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Tracking & Reporting System Availability

What is being used to track and report on system availability and uptime? Currently, we are using a rather manual process but I would like to know if anyone has a simple, inexpensive product that can automate things a bit. For example we track different types of downtime (enterprise, WAN, isolated, remote users, etc) and different sub-categories (productional or core business hours versus afterhours/weekend). I am sure something could be done in MS Access, but simply don't have the time.

Another FPC??

In the military, units send in daily reports. These reports become graphs and end up as part of command briefings. In the 70?s, a unit had in its daily report something tagged ?FPC?. For 18 months it was duly tracked and at briefings the trends were noted by the senior staff. They got a new clerk in at the unit, and when he went to submit the daily report he discovered there was no procedure for the FPC entry. He left the number off, and after a number of weeks was directed by headquartersto provide the missing FPC! It took a number of weeks to determine that no one knew what the FPC was, only that it was now missing and the senior staff wanted the numbers! They finally tracked down the previous clerk. After several minutes of uncontrolled laughter, he explained that no one really used these reports. To prove it, he had added the FPC entry. It was the number of flys caught each day on the fly paper in the office ? Fly Paper Count. The numbers trended nicely over time and as the seasons changed, unlike other entries like head count that remained fairly static.

You have the start of an appropriate way to report. The next step is to determine exactly what needs to be reported, to whom, in what format, to take what actions. With that, you can determine whether an ICMP approach suffices for data collection, or if you need SNMP traps, log interrogations, or active performance metrics. Then you can request suggestions for each of the needs and do a comparison of tools to find what works best for you. You may want to keep reporting as a separate requirement and select tools that report only for particular situations ? Web postings, paper reports, IM capabilities, etc. Do this right and you add value. Do it wrong , and you create your own version of the FPC report.

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